Phil Gilbert faces a big challenge. He needs to change the way his company thinks from a process-orientated engineering mindset to more creative design oriented model that invests in a delightful-to-use customer-centric experience. It would be much easier if his company had 50 products in its portfolio, even 500. But Mr. Gilbert is General Manager of IBM Design responsible for the significance of Design Thinking across the entire company, its global span across all industries, countries and, most of all, 1000s of products. How does a business leader comprehend enterprise transformation with such broad responsibility?

I spoke to Mr. Gilbert several weeks ago on the progress of IBM Design per the occasion of the launch of their new Design Studio facility in Austin, TX. The former chief executive of from IBM acquisition of business process modeling (BPM) vendor, Lombardi, brought an award-winning design approach for a fairly complicated technology product.

Per lore, a few years before Thomas Watson, Jr. became the second CEO of IBM, he walked down Fifth Avenue in New York past the Olivetti typewriter store and had an epiphany as he saw their bright colors and sleek designs in contrast to the dimly lit offices and drab products from his company. It led him to hire architect and former curator of the New York Museum of Modern Art, Eliot Noyes, to create the first design program for its products, buildings and marketing material. In this effort, Noyes hired some of the iconic designers of the period such as Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Paul Rand, and Isamu Noguchi. With its massive growth over the intervening decades, design on a practical level moved out to the edges into the divisions and product teams. They were still creating award-winning products, but with disparate features sometimes driven towards engineering optimization.

Rawn Shah: So how did the new IBM Design get started or restarted should I say?

Phil Gilbert: We created this division about 15 months ago. We had great design in our Comms. & Marketing group. We still had great design in our mainframes— z/Enterprise [mainframe] won product of the year award for Industrial Design [for its approach to] heat transfer through the baffles of the cabinet. We also had great digital design out of IBM Interactive for clients such as Wimbledon, the US Open, the Masters Tournament, and Coca Cola.

When my company got acquired 3.5 years ago, it was prototypical acquisition. We didn't bring anything new compute capabilities to IBM. What we were known for in the BPM market space was a really thoughtfully designed product that more people could actually use. We applied the same design principles as we had done in Lombardi and turned 40 IBM products into 4 products and made them in a sense delightful to use.

About 18 months ago, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and the Senior Leadership Team started talking about improving the user experience around our all of software products. We have now brought these techniques and approaches to the entirety of IBM.

We see it in the broader context of a holistic way to engage with our clients. From the moment a client discovers on us Google, to coming to IBM, to contacting a sales person, … We are redesigning all of our systems of engagement. Our perception is holistic, end-to-end.

RS: Who do you have on your IBM Design team?

PG: We've got to figure out a scalable way to hire a 1000 people over the next few years. There is a huge constraint on great designers. Some good part of our hiring is going to come from universities. We also have to bring in fresh perspective into IBM, a moderate design perspective.

The head of our studio location in Austin is award-wining designer Adam Cutler (from IBM Interactive). Adam is also head of the virtual studio across IBM globally. Under Adam, we intentionally brought in a team of 8 studio leads across multiple of the design discipline all from outside [the company].

Denise Burton, from Frog Design for 20 years and a Fellow, was so inspired by our mission that she has been with us for 6 months. For first camp classes, Denise was one of the everyday instructors.

Doug Powell joined us five months ago. He was the past president of the American Institute of the Graphic Arts and also a TEDx speaker. When we went to an AIGA convention to recruit, graphic artists were lining up to have their picture with Doug.

We also have Brad Becker former Chief Designer for Microsoft Silverlight and Azure; Liz Holt, also from MS as Chief Designer for MS Outlook. We go for world class talent from where we can find it.

We found Todd Wilkins, former Chief Design Researcher at the Mayo Clinic through a referral. He moved down to Austin just to be part of what we are doing. We are doing a lot in [the medical and healthcare] world. For example, we are using Watson as one of the particular human interface guidelines that we are getting ready to design.

While the world was moving to everything being done by software, what we haven't done is [to build] a great scalable ethos.